Friday, September 21, 2012

June 13 - calm, eider

View over the data tent of the Brooks Range to the south

When I awoke this morning something
was different. It took only the briefest of moments to realize: there was no
wind. For the first time in 10 days, the relentless wind had completely
dropped. On a featureless plain such as the tundra, sound carried quite a ways
when liberated from the tampering of constant gusts. I could hear birds that
were close to a kilometer away, and the people taking in the cook tent were
clearly audible from at least 50 meters away. It was still foggy, but that
could not mar the wonder of calm.

We set out after breakfast with it
still calm and foggy, and throughout the 10km that we walked we were able to
witness the complete transformation of weather. By our return around 6pm it had
become a simple gorgeous sunny day with low winds merely whispering in the
background as we went about our business.

King Eider pair

The warm brown tundra around us is
broken up by the ponds and channels glinting different shades of blue against the
picture perfect sky. Distant few remnant drifts of snow glow brilliant white;
shining beacons from miles away. Birds fly every which way: small sparrow-sized
shorebirds flit from hummock to hummock; a skein of ivory Snow Geese flies
over, complementing the newly liberated blue sky like little living clouds. A
Caribou and her calf pick their way across a gravel floodplain, idly feeding on
grasses. Later, back at camp, a female Caribou walks right by camp and spends
the evening grazing a couple hundred meters from us.

As always, this natural
extravaganza is framed to the north by icebergs on the horizon, a line of
snow-capped peaks of the Brooks Range to the south, and to the east and west;
seemingly endless tundra. Tonight the winds are still low, sky still clear, and
scenery still unrealistically mesmerizing.

Female Red-necked Phalarope - a rare instance of where the females are brighter than the males in a bird species!

In addition to the waking dream of
a day that was today, there were also great new birds, most notable the rare
and enigmatic Spectacled Eider! This striking seaduck only breeds from eastern
Siberia as far east as we were, and until the 1990’s nobody knew where it spent
winters! The secret was finally discovered by a couple biologists flying in a
plane over the Arctic Ocean searching for birds tagged with radio transponders.
They came upon huge groups of Spectacled Eider packed wing-to-wing in small
natural holes in the pack ice, holes called polynyas that form due to
underwater upwellings or wind patterns. The entire world population of this
species spends the whole winter in the Arctic Ocean, with 24 hour darkness,
surrounded by nothing but ice for hundreds of miles, and they make it work!
Amazing creatures.